by Tessa Dale
“Very good,” McFarland said. “What do you think, Richard?”
“The thinner noose was drawn backwards, and down,” Clever told the forensic expert. “I suggest that was the killing action. Peter Catesby was throttled, from behind. Then he was strung up to make it look like suicide. I suspect the killer wanted us to think the victim was simply correcting his earlier failure.”
“I can’t suggest either motives, or actions,” the professor told them. “I can only give you the facts. The victim was strangled, then suspended. This man is almost six feet tall, and quite muscular.”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” the DCI responded. “Say you strangled someone, Dan. How would you go about hoisting him up like he was?”
“Easy,” Dan Jones replied. “I’d get you or Stanton to help. Whoever it was who killed Catesby, he had help.”
“Then we are looking for two suspects,” Clever concluded. “Can you get me a full report by tomorrow morning, Professor McFarland?”
“For you, Richard, I’ll miss dinner.”
“Thank you, that’s much appreciated,” Clever said, a little uncomfortable with the professor’s bonhomie. He had not realised that when suggesting the professor for the position, he was also gaining a friend, whether he liked it, or not. “Find DC Stanton, Sergeant Jones, we have things to attend to, back at the station.”
“You live for enigmas, don’t you, Richard?” McFarland said, as he searched the victim’s body. “I suspect that the Sphinx would have been wasting its time trying to find an unsolvable riddle for you to tackle.”
“It’s how my mind works,” Clever conceded. “I have to look at every facet.”
“Fair enough,” McFarland said. “Evidence bag, if you please, Miss Marshall. A small, bird-like woman appeared by the professor’s side, holding a waxed brown paper bag with a clear, cellulite window in one side. “One wallet. One key. A fountain pen and some coins. Does the man have any family close by?”
“I don’t think so,” Clever replied. “He’s not from around here.”
“A single ship on a storm tossed sea,” McFarland said, sighing. “Not a friend to even identify him. Sad.”
“I understand,” the DCI said. “No man is an island, springs to mind also. You obviously feel that friendship makes the world turn easier.”
“It does, Richard,” the forensic scientist said. “Come to dinner one night, and meet my dog. I also possess a splendid Persian chess set, made from ivory a hundred years ago.”
“Very well … Neil … I accept.”
“There!” McFarland stood. “If we are not friends, I can never thank you properly for getting me this position.”
“You were the best man we could afford,” Clever replied, testily. “The choice was made out of necessity, not personal liking. It was, however, a very good choice. Please, hurry the report through to me, Neil. If only for friendship sake.”
“The professor means no harm, Guv,” Jones said back at the station. “He likes to work in a friendly environment, and he just couldn’t figure you out.”
“I suppose I must seem like a bit of a cold fish to most people,” the DCI responded. “It’s just that I use all of my abilities on the job, and seldom have time for frivolities. Neil McFarland actually has time to play chess.”
“Against whom, his dog?” Jones laughed. “That Miss Marshall is a sweet looking little thing, and he never gives her so much as a second glance. Sorry, Guv, but I think you two are peas out of the same pod.”
“I’ll bear that in mind, Sergeant,” Clever said. “In the meantime, perhaps we can get things moving. You and Stanton can track down Peter Catesby. We have a name, and where he called home. I believe his landlady said he was from Coventry.”
“Yes, Guv. Providing Catesby is his real name, and he does actually come from the Midlands,” Jones replied. “Once the professor has completed his post mortem examination, we’ll be in a much better position.”
“How’s that, Sarge?” Stanton, a detective for less than two days, was struggling to think in the sort of convoluted way that more worldly wise CID men employed.
“We’ll have his fingerprints, and his dental records,” Dan Jones explained, patiently. “We run his prints, and send requests to every other police force in the country. That way, if he’s ever come to our notice, we’ll be able to identify him. The dental records might take a little longer to come up with something.”
“You mean we have to contact every dentist’s practice in England?” Stanton could see a long road ahead.
“Maybe not,” said Clever. “If Peter Catesby has ever had expensive work done, it might point at a particular area, or even a certain group of dentists.”
“That’s right,” Jones continued. “Some of the big southern practices are adopting new techniques coming over from America. If our chap has used one of them, we might just touch lucky.”
“What about his wallet, Guv?” Stanton asked. “I carry identification in mine, in case of an accident.”
“It’s the first thing a decent forensic man looks for,” the DCI told him. “McFarland would have been on the phone the moment we got back. No, I’m afraid this is going to be down to some old fashioned sleuthing.”
Jones and Stanton set about trying to trace their victim from different directions, whilst Richard Clever did what he did best. He stowed himself away in his office, with a pot of coffee, and the file for the ancient Peter Fornell case. With enough reading, he was sure some tiny fact would present itself.
Despite having a photographic memory, actually reading the original documents gave the DCI a somewhat different view of things. The smell and feel of the damp, mouldering old paperwork reminded him that the investigation, back in Nineteen Twelve, had concerned real, flesh and blood people. One of whom had paid the ultimate price for a brutal murder.
Peter Fornell came across as an essentially weak man, floundering about in a sea of despair. After a fine education, he had tried his hand in the City of London’s finance houses. After six months, an unexpected audit of the bank’s overseas investment portfolio prompted young Fornell to resign. Further jobs came and went with depressing regularity.
Peter Fornell and money didn’t mix. He could be counted on to defraud, or steal, with a total lack of criminal talent. Eventually, he was reduced to living on the shadier edges of society. His better class of friends began to drop him, and he moved more and more into the sleazier side of London’s underworld.
For a while he had worked for an illegal gaming house, but had become a keen, though unsuccessful, cards player. He left, owing several hundred pounds, and was dogged by hard men, intent on recouping the bad debts he left behind him, like the wake of a floundering ship. At some point in Nineteen Hundred and Ten, Peter Fornell went through a form of marriage to a woman with a police record. She was with child when they married, although there was the suggestion that Peter Fornell may not have been the father.
The child was adopted, and for the next twelve months, Peter Fornell acted as his wife’s procurer, finding her a string of well heeled lovers, prepared to pay for her services. Things improved financially, until his wife was arrested for running a house of ill repute, getting off on a legal technicality. Peter Fornell abandoned her around this time, and threw himself on the scant mercy of his father.
Fornell had written, asking to meet for the purpose of effecting a reconciliation between the two men. The letter remained unanswered. Then he had demanded money, to stop him revealing his fathers vicarious position, as the father of a bastard son. Charles Vancleur was not to be blackmailed. He allowed the connection to become public knowledge. The revelation enhanced his reputation amongst his male friends, rather than detracted from his character.
Peter Fornell was now the acknowledged bastard son of an Earl of the Realm. He made a final plea for financial help in April Nineteen Twelve. The old man had responded by offering a one way ticket to the USA, and a small, monthly allowance once there.
Desperate for cash, and with the Metropolitan Police, and several angry mobsters after him, Peter Fornell agreed to leave his homeland forever. Arrangements were to be made by the Earl’s business partner, Simeon Arthurson. The young man packed up his few remaining belongings and travelled to Southampton. He was to embark for the United States on the maiden voyage of the new luxury liner, the SS Titanic.
The tickets failed to materialise, and Peter Fornell travelled back to the north of England, for a fateful last meeting with his father. He presented himself at Castleburgh Hall, intent on begging help from the Earl. At this point in the investigation, the story split into two.
There was the evidence of the Earl’s housekeeper, and his business partner, and the testimony of Peter Fornell as he fought a desperate battle for his very life. He confessed to being furious at his treatment, and even that he harboured violent thoughts against his father. Then, things had changed.
The Earl was in ill health, and no longer the arrogant, stiff necked aristocrat of previous times. He granted his son an audience, during which Fornell asked why his father had treated him so badly, having him travel all the way to Southampton, only to have his hopes dashed.
The Earl had just received news that the Titanic had gone down, with the loss of over fifteen hundred souls, and he thanked God that some administrative confusion had stopped the ticket being there.
Peter Fornell told a moving story of how, on realising how close disaster had come, they had both realised that blood was, indeed, thicker than water. The old man, with tears in his eyes, embraced his prodigal son, and declared that he would make him joint heir to his fortune the very next day. The Earldom could never be Fornell’s, but half of the estate’s wealth would amount to a vast fortune, providing a yearly allowance in excess of twenty thousand pounds.
Fornell was back in the fold once more. He was given some cash, and told to return the following day, when the Earl would have his lawyers draw up the necessary documentation. Peter, elated at the turn of events, had left on good terms with his repentant father, only to be arrested the following day.
The business partner testified that not only had the Earl told him to cancel the Titanic passage, but had gone so far as to instruct him to completely disown his son. The black sheep, a womaniser, thief and attempted blackmailer, was never to be let back into the inner circle.
“The boy,” Simeon Arthurson reported his partner saying, “is, henceforth, dead to me.”
Perhaps most damning, was the testimony of the housekeeper, Miss Leighton. She was the only remaining ‘live in’ servant, so was alone when the Earl’s natural son arrived on the doorstep, demanding to be admitted.
She had answered the door to Fornell, and been pushed to one side. The Earl had tried to calm Fornell down, and asked the housekeeper to bring some coffee - as the young man was plainly quite drunk. Then he closeted himself away with his furious visitor, and she had heard raised voices deep into the night. Having retired to bed at midnight, she was unaware as to when the son finally left.
The following morning she found the Earl’s bedroom to have remained unused, and went to the library. Her master was dead, sprawled across his desk, with a knife in his back. Some drawers were open, and her master’s cash box stood empty on a side table.
Peter Fornell had, of course, denied his guilt, insisting to the last that he had left the old man alive. His defence barrister had put forward a theory that after he had left, some other person had broken in, killed and robbed his father, and fled into the night.
Apart from the small amount of money taken from the petty cash box, priceless heirlooms had been completely ignored by this mysterious interloper. The murder weapon was identified, by several people, as one owned by the Earl, and was covered with Peter Fornell’s fingerprints.
The jury’s credulity could not stretch so far, and Peter Fornell was damned in their eyes as a patricide. He was found guilty, sentenced to death, and hanged in Carlisle Prison in the January of Nineteen Thirteen.
Richard Clever sighed and closed the cover of the file. It was a sad story, made sadder by the fact that father had been killed by son. Unlike in the ancient story of Oedipus, who had not recognised his victim, Peter Fornell had committed patricide without a second thought. Or, had he?
The DCI was not a man to accept the obvious, especially when it meant the difference between life and death. Something was wrong. He knew that, amongst the various details in the case file, something was out of kilter.
It was time to dig below the surface.
Chapter Eight
Detective Inspector Bob Thompson, like most of his fellow investigators, refused to believe in co-incidence. So, when a call from the Castleburgh City Constabulary came to his desk he was intrigued to find it was Dan Jones, an erstwhile colleague.
“Dan! This is a pleasant surprise,” he said. “How long has it been since we pounded the beat in Manchester?“
“It must be seven years,” Jones replied. “I wondered if you’d even remember me after all this time.”
“What, forget my old drinking pal?“ the DI declared. “They were happy days. Where are you stationed these days, old chap?”
“I’m a detective sergeant with Castleburgh CID, Bob. I see you got your promotion to inspector. I suppose Betty was delighted.”
“Yes, but I had to move to down to the Black Country for it,” the DI said. “Betty decided not to come with me.”
“Sorry. It’s an occupational hazard for us all.” The instance of marriage breakdowns was very high for police officers, second only in frequency to doctors. “The hours don’t help.”
“That’s true enough. Are you still a free man?”
“As a bird,” Dan Jones replied. “I think it’s because I’m always attracted to the naughty ones. I have a few laughs and cut out before the final curtain comes down.”
“Good for you, old man. Now, what exactly can I do for you?”
“I’m hoping you can cut through the red tape for me,” Dan Jones asked. “I’m looking for a man who might be from your part of the world.”
“Can you be more a little more exact, Dan?” said Thompson. “The Midlands is a pretty large area.”
“We have a possible murder victim, who claimed to hail from Coventry,” Jones replied. “The only name we have is Peter Catesby.”
“I see. Anything else you can give me?”
“We think he was looking at an old murder case,” Jones continued. “He seemed to think that there was a plot to get the wrong man hanged.”
“That figures,” Thompson said. “I knew a plot had to come into it somewhere along the line. With a name like Catesby, what else could it be?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Catesby was a local man. He was arrested and executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot,” Thompson explained. “I think your man was being ironic. It will be a surprise if that is his real name.”
“Damn, I was hoping you might be able to pin this chap down for us, Bob,” Dan Jones said, his voice betraying his upset.
“Oh, I’ll run him through our records department, and have the electoral roll checked. All the usual things, but don’t build up your hopes. Can you give me a day or two?”
“I’m in your hands,” Jones replied. “I’ve got my DC putting together a description. I’ll have Stanton wire you a copy, as soon as he’s done it.”
“That might help,” the DI responded. “Give me your direct line, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have anything.”
The two men exchanged a few more historic pleasantries before hanging up, and DI Thompson was left to ponder a tricky little request. Just how do you identify a man who almost certainly has given a false name, and who might have been born in the general geographic location?
Then it came to him. One of those rare series of random thoughts that suddenly coalesce into a possible lead presented themselves, and made the DI reach for his phone. He picked up the receiver and punched in his sergeant’s ex
tension number.
“Fry, what’s the name of that oddbod in uniformed who spends all his time doing puzzles and quizzes?”
“Sergeant Kitteridge, Guv.”
“Get him in here, now. I need to pick his brain.”
Twenty minutes later, Sergeant Royston Kitteridge was standing in front of the CID Inspector, wondering what he had done to deserve such a peremptory summons. He hoped it would not take long, as he had the Times crossword awaiting his attention.
“What can you tell me about a bloke called Catesby, Sergeant Kitteridge?” DI Thompson demanded.
“The name is a local one, Sir. They used to be quite a powerful family a few hundred years back.”
“I’m concerned with the Guy Fawkes conspirator,” the DI told him.“Robert Catesby, Sir?” the sergeant asked. “He was the son of William Catesby, and his wife Anne, who used to be a Throckmorton. He was born in Warwickshire, and was the main leader of the Gunpowder Plot. The local Roman Catholics revered him, after he tried to assassinate King James in Sixteen Hundred and Five. He died after a gun battle. His body was decapitated, and the head stuck on a spike outside the Houses of Parliament. I think it’s a bit late to try and charge him with treason now, sir.”
“Very funny, Sergeant Kitteridge. I knew I could rely on your pedantic taste for general knowledge. Where would you go, locally I mean, if you wanted to find out more about him?”
“Either his family home in Oxfordshire, or Holbeche House near Dudley,” Kitteridge replied. “Can I ask why you need to know about all this ancient history, Sir?”
“It might be nothing, but I’m looking for a man going under the name of Catesby. I think it’s an alias, and wondered if he had assumed it, subconsciously, because of some contact with the historical figure.”
“Then I’d probably recommend you start at Holbeche Hall, Sir,” Kitteridge said. “The Catesby home in Oxfordshire is privately owned, and not open to the public. Holbeche offer tours during the summer months.”
